The Frustrations of this Nursing Mom

I’ve been meaning to post pictures of Caffrey and blog about my sweet new baby but Caffrey has kept me quite busy! He is almost three weeks old and we have had a few issues since coming home from the hospital. While in the hospital, he lost a pound but the pediatrician didn’t seem worried. When we came home from the hospital, we began to struggle with breastfeeding. He wanted to sleep all the time and I couldn’t get him to stay awake long enough to latch. At his week one appointment, he had lost more weight and his bilirubon levels went up. At the appointment, our pediatrician said the word that I dread hearing, supplement. I know that lots of children grow up on formula and are just perfect but I set a goal that I will breastfeed my children for one year. My wonderful husband say the tears swelling in my eyes and he knows how much I hate formula and he came up with a wonderful plan. He asked the Doctor if I could just pump and bottle feed Caffrey instead of using formula. She said yes and I was so relieved. I am not sure why Doctors jump so quick to formula! So we came home and my goal was to nurse every other feeding and pump and bottle feed the others. Unfortunately, It hurt so bad to nurse Caffrey. Even with a perfect latch it was so painful. He would start screaming after a few minutes or fall asleep and I was growing more frustrated. That evening, Rich noticed that Caffrey’s tongue was attached to far in the front of his mouth. We looked it up in my favorite breastfeeding book and it’s called tongue tied. Apparently it makes it where a baby can’t put his tongue in the right position to hold a perfect latch. So he wasn’t able to get enough milk and that was why it was so painful for me to feed him. So I went strictly to pumping and bottle feeding for the weekend. He gained six ounces by our Monday appointment. Our Dr. was thrilled! Rich pointed out the tongue to her and she told us she noticed it at the last appointment but that every Dr. viewed it differently but if we wanted she would send us to a specialist. We said yes! We had read that clipping the tongue was an easy process and most Doctors did it in the office. After clipping the tongue, many babies are able to breastfeed successfully.  We had to wait a whole week before going to Mobile to see and ENT. I spent the whole week strictly pumping. I never knew how exhausting pumping would be! I would wake up, feed Caffrey a bottle, change his diaper, put him back to sleep, pump, and then store the milk, and then I felt like as soon as I fell asleep it was time to start over! At the ENT, the doctor said that his tongue definitely needed to be clipped. He said it would cause speech problems later if we didn’t fix it. He then sent us to a different ENT that finally clipped Caffrey’s tongue. I never knew this but tongue tied is hereditary. Both of Rich’s parents and his sister had it. Now that we know, I will be looking closely in future children before ever leaving the hospital. I was so excited to try to nurse him that night! I knew that he would have to relearn and I would need to patient but I think I thought he would take right to it. The next several days were really frustrating. He would scream while I was trying to nurse him and he still couldn’t hold the latch. I thought maybe he was sore but after several days there was no improvement. I have to be honest, I am devastated that I cant breastfeed my baby! It was such a good experience with Reese. I loved the connivence of it too. I never had to worry if I brought a bottle, and I could sleep while feeding him at night. I have now about lost hope of breastfeeding Caffrey. I am still pumping and storing milk. So far, I am not worried about having to give him formula. I have a great milk supply so I am going to keep pumping for as long as I can. I have a while shelf in the freezer full of breas tmilk so far. It’s exhausting and I am not use to having to wash bottles everyday but I really want him to only have breast milk so I think it’s worth it! He is continually gaining weight and we only had to use like 6 ounces of formula that first day! Through all the frustration, I am so thankful that I at least have a great milk supply. And he is pretty cute!